A Somber Annual Meeting For Conservative Lawyers

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: November 19, 2006

For the last 20 years, the Federalist Society, a conclave of conservative lawyers, has steadily flourished, even when there was a Democrat in the White House. But the recent election results, along with increased partisan bitterness over judicial nominations, may have given an unaccustomed jolt to members of the group, whose annual convention concluded on Saturday.

The event has usually been one in which many society members could look at their reflections in the hallway mirrors of the Mayflower Hotel here and, with only a little imagination, see themselves wearing a judge's robes.

No group has been more influential in sending up candidates for the federal courts; when President Bush took office in 2001, the society had recommended to him the majority of his first slate of 11 federal appeals court judges. His appointments to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., were both active in the Federalist Society and enjoyed strong support from it.

But the wheel of judicial fortune has turned. The Senate Democrats who will be seated in January will constitute a majority, and they say they are determined to block any of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees whom they deem too conservative.

Since that might include almost all of his nominees, there was a little less jauntiness as the conservative lawyers gathered this year.

How glum was the mood? ''Well, I guess I've just about climbed back from the ledge -- the one I was about to jump off of,'' said Daniel McLaughlin, a New York lawyer who attended the convention. Mr. McLaughlin said he could not stop fretting over who would be confirmed to the federal bench in the next two years.

John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a senior Justice Department official, said the mood at the convention was notably grim because of the likelihood that Democrats would block any identifiable conservatives from the federal appeals courts or the Supreme Court.

That is probably an accurate assessment. Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been outspoken in opposing Mr. Bush's nominees, said Friday that the election results ''dramatically changed everything.''

''The days when the Federalist Society would get just about anything it wanted are over,'' Mr. Schumer said.

On Friday morning, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the departing chairman of the Judiciary Committee, offered a pep talk to the subdued conservatives. ''There'll be another election,'' Mr. Specter said, and Democrats would have to answer then for any nominees they obstructed.

The Federalist Society was founded in 1981 by a handful of conservative law students who thought of themselves as an oppressed minority. They complained that they were victims of a kind of ideological neglect on campus: conservative law students were not taken seriously, they said, or worse, were hissed at in class when they expressed their views.

But with its single-mindedness about getting conservative judges on the federal bench and its success working within Republican Party politics, the group became deeply envied by its liberal counterparts. Members found it a valuable networking tool on two fronts. It provided a matchmaking service between conservative judges and recent law school graduates eager to gain a prestigious clerkship. And for older lawyers, a speech before the society, usually denouncing some liberal notion, was a way to be noticed by its judicial scouting machine.

Eugene B. Meyer, the society's president, said he understood that there might now be some short-term discouragement among members. ''But I suspect they will get even more enthusiastic afterwards,'' Mr. Meyer said.

The group thinks of itself largely as a place to debate serious legal ideas, he said, and while ''it might be harder to get the types of things we want discussed, heard and undertaken, we'll be largely unaffected in the long term.''

Mr. Meyer said the Federalist Society would adapt to the vicissitudes of politics and might not, for example, expect such a star-studded roster of Republican speakers and honorees. (This convention featured appearances by Justices Alito and Antonin Scalia and Vice President Dick Cheney).

The group is still growing, with the greatest enthusiasm at its law school chapters.

Professor Yoo said that the widespread dismay at the gathering was only over the prospect of judicial nominations, and that it did not signal any lessening of interest in conservative ideas. ''The Bush effort to remake the judiciary has crested,'' he said. ''We all will have to play defense for a while on this.''

But as to the contentious issue of the reach of presidential authority, the Federalist Society membership is not united. Professor Yoo, who wrote several memorandums while in the Justice Department arguing that the president's power is expanded during a war on terrorism, represents one wing of the conservatives, while many in the group are smaller-government libertarians.

At a spirited panel discussion Friday with Professor Yoo, one of the revered figures of the group, Prof. Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, branded as dangerous the notion of expanded powers for the executive branch because of the continuing fight against terrorism.

''This is an issue which splits this group right down the middle,'' Professor Epstein said.

Photos: The Federalist Society gathered last week for its convention, where two Supreme Court justices and Vice President Dick Cheney gave speeches. (Photographs by Andrew Councill for The New York Times)